Living With The Dead
by thebusnamedgak
Summary: William Todd was your average 11th grader.  That was before the dead took over.  Through a series of personal trials, William will have to uncover an apocolyptic scandal, and make sacrafices that will haunt him forever, all while living with the dead.
1. Chapter 1

_Hey everyone. If you remember, I was originally writing "Survivor of the Dead" a year ago. I didn't think it was going very well, so I've decided to rewrite it, with a whole new plot. I am a published author, and my writing is pretty good. I hope you enjoy this, please comment. Also, if you are wondering, these zombies are kind of a mix between the slow ones and the fast one. They walk __slow__, but depending on the extent of their injuries, they can stumble around kind of fast. Enjoy!_

It was 1:00. Eight minutes until the end of English. I looked down from the perfectly circular, perfectly plain school clock. At that moment, everything was so silent, that I could hear every darn tick of the simple, lifeless clock. Yet as it ticked, it was living. With every tick, its mechanical heart beat one more time.

My name is William Todd. I was an 11th grade student at High School in southwestern Connecticut. Before the events that would soon unfold, I was your normal teenager. I had never come into full consciousness of who I was, until the events of October 4, 2007.

I looked down at my paper. Quote quiz. AP 11th grade English was no breeze. I tried sparknoting Catcher in the Rye last night, but it did no good as this was too damn difficult. I still couldn't believe the audacity of Mrs. Thomas, to give us a quiz on the day she was absent. But everyone was absent… or at least it seemed so.

Over the past two days, it seemed everyone at school was getting sick. I could tell that even the kid next to me had the same thing. His face looked older, gray, and weathered. He was hunched over his desk, and had been coughing all period.

I twisted my head up at the ceiling in frustration, and ran my hands through my short brown hair. There was no way I was passing this. I looked over to my best friend, Evan Smith. We had been friends since elementary school. He was the varsity team's starting running back and middle linebacker. I was the backup quarterback, but that had changed before the season started. Our starter went down with a broken leg in a scrimmage, and since then, I stepped into the starting role quite nicely. If five games, our team was 3-2, and I had thrown seven touchdowns with five interceptions.

I caught Evan's eye. He shook his head, and showed me his blank paper. Great… The substitute, Mr. Warren, announced that there were five minutes left before he collected the quizzes. Quickly, I bluffed and scribbled down some answers that probably would have been partial credit in regular English, but in this class, they were worthless.

Mr. Warren walked around the room and collected the quizzes. He was about 60, had glasses and a big, but lanky frame, and was one of those guys who could never stop talking about WWI, he was obsessed. As he stood at the desk at the front of the class, there was a pounding on the door.

Mr. Warren ran to the door, and as he opened it, Mr. Streets, the school Janitor, can tumbling in. There was blood all over his shirt, and wounds on his chest, arms, and legs. As he came into the room, he fell onto one knee. He muttered a faint "help," and fell to the ground. He was unconscious. Mr. Warren instructed a student to call 911. Within 10 minutes, paramedics came, and he was taken out of the classroom, awake, moaning and groaning.

Although I was bewildered by the janitor's injuries, the school day continued. A lot of kids were getting picked up by their parents, as they were sick, and went to the nurse to go home. I decided to go to the nurse as well, but only to get some preventative medicine.

I trudged down the eerily empty halls, past the gym, and to the nurse's office. I opened the door, and walked into the office. It was completely white. It wasn't a very inviting place. The waiting room consisted of three plain, plastic chairs, and a wooden table. I walked into the nurse's room, and she wasn't there. Usually, she left a sign when she wasn't there. I left her room, and walked to the back room of the office. There, along the window, was a streak of dark, crimson blood, and a hand imprinted in it. I called the main office, and let them know that something had happened.

Everything that happened that day was strange, and I was getting uncomfortable. During my free period, Evan and I took a ride in his car. We didn't do anything in particular, we just rode around to get away. We returned to the school about an hour later.

We had history. As we walked down the hall, we didn't see one person. We walked into AP US History together. We were five minutes late. However, when I opened the door, no one was in the classroom. I gave Evan a furtive look, and we turned back. We turned left, and walked down the halls.

"Maybe they closed school early?" I asked Evan hypothetically. As we turned another corner that would take us to the exit, I saw Mr. Warren with his back turned towards a set of red lockers.

"Mr…Warren?" He grunted, and gagged. "What's going on here?" I asked him, but he still didn't make any indication of responsiveness. I walked up to him, and grabbed his shoulder, in an attempt to turn him around. Finally, he turned, and my eyes were met directly with his yellow once.

Yellow? His eyes were never yellow, they were blue. Something was wrong. Mr. Warren launched out at me with a renewed vigor. He opened his mouth wide, and tried to bite me. I threw him down to the side.

"What the hell was that?" Shouted Evan.

Mr. Warren was writhing on the ground, and eventually stood up. "Mr. Warren, is everything okay?" I asked him calmly. But once again, he launched himself at me. This time, I just stepped to the side, and caught a glimpse of an open wound on his neck. After he missed me, he came back again. This time he stumbled forwards, and landed awkwardly into me, I fell. Mr. Warren had me pinned down, and was once again trying to bite me. "Evan, help me!" I shouted. But right behind Evan was the school nurse.

"Evan, behind you!" Evan turned around as the nurse threw herself at him. She too had yellow eyes, and she too was trying to bite Evan.

One of my hands was on Mr. Warren's forehead, the other below his chin. I thrust his head off of me and jumped up immediately. I rushed over to Evan, and body slammed the nurse. She tripped backwards and fell over.

Evan and I stood back to back, our fists clenched. "There's something wrong with them," I panted to Evan, "Look at their eyes. It's like they aren't human."

"You're right. Let's just get out of here. Just back up slowly and let's run for it." We did just as he said. But as soon as we started to run, we came face to face with another sick person.

"Isn't that Mary?" Evan asked me.

"Yeah," she was hardly recognizable, as her face was mostly covered in blood, part of her right arm was missing.

"My God, didn't you just ask her to homecoming?"

"Yeah, well… I don't think that was working anyways. Look, She's got it in her eyes t-" Mary launched herself between us. I knocked her away, and glanced around. I saw a crowbar next to the always broken water fountain to the right. I grabbed it, and knocked her in the stomach. She stumbled back a step, but kept coming. I kept on knocking in the back, stomach, and the chest. I didn't want to kill her, but wasn't she trying to kill me? Finally, I knocked her over the head with all of my head, and I knocked her to the ground, lifeless. She didn't get up.

Behind me, Evan was fighting off Mr. Warren and the Nurse. I turned to help him, but a hand grabbed my shoulder. I turned around, ready to pounce, but found that it was a police officer. "Move back," stated the officer in a monotonous tone. Evan shrugged off Mr. Warren, and stepped back. The cop shot Mr. Warren in the head, followed by the nurse.

"You shoot them in the head," stated the officer.

"Who's them?" I asked the officer. But I already knew, the people that I had known were no longer people. Their yellow, lifeless eyes showed it all.

"The ones who get sick. They turn into things, and they try to attack you. There's a lot more of them in here, we're clearing them out. Follow me and I'll escort you out of here." We followed the cop, and made it outside.

Life was about to change.


	2. Chapter 2

_Thanks for the great chapter one reviews. Sorry it took me a little while to get up chapter. I'll get chapter three up later tonight or tomorrow._

The police officer, after shooting Mr. Warren in the head, escorted Evan and I to the back of the school. There was a phalanx of about 500 kids, all packed together, some screaming, some crying.

"How did we not hear this when returned to school?" I asked Evan. I guess we were kind of running to class, so we weren't paying attention (plus the kids were out of sight).

Confused, we pushed our way through the pack, to find our friends. As I trudged through the pack, a darkness came through me like it never had before. My little brother, Nate was in the Jr. High. I turned to Evan, and exclaimed, "Nate!"

I ran over to a police officer, and asked her about the Jr. High. "It's completely overrun, we only got out about 100 kids."

I began to panic, and dialed my brother's number. One ring… two… three… I waited tensely. "Hello?" My brother picked up the phone and I immediately recognized his quiet, soft voice, and my muscles relaxed.

"Nate, where are you?"

"In the school." Once again, the tenseness rose over me. "We're locked in the cafeteria kitchen. The zombies have been trying to get in here for a while. There's about 30 or 40 of us."

Zombies? Zombies? These things couldn't be zombies. "What did you say was trying to go after you? Did you say zombies?"

"Yeah, what do you think they are? They're dead, and they're trying to eat us. What else would you call them?"

The image of Mr. Warren's yellow eyes popped into my head again. These things… they weren't human. They were something else. I guess the best thing to call them was zombies, yet, that seemed unreal, and trust me, these things were real.

"Okay, stay put, I will come to get you. If they break in, just try to kill them by hitting them in the head. Nothing else will work. I'll be there as quick as I can. Okay, b-"

"Wait!" Shrieked a voice from behind me. It was Haley Smith, a girl about 5'6 with dark brown hair and brown eyes. "Ask your brother if my sister Amanda is there!"

"Nate, is there a girl named Amanda Smith there?" My brother asked me to hang on a minute, and he went to check. About thirty seconds later, he came back and answered a definitive yes. Haley shrieked and jumped into my arms.

Then, another kid name Jason Dennis asked me if his little brother was there. My brother came back and said no. I then had about twenty other kids ask me if their siblings were there, and 90 of the time it was no.

Evan and I went over to a police officer. "We have confirmed word that there are about 30 to 40 kids stuck in the Jr. High."

"I'm sorry, but the school is overtaken. If we tried to break in, we would lose the barricade, and our officers."

"Barricade?"

"Yes, a barricade. How do you think we are keeping those things from roaming the streets?"

This was a big problem. We didn't have any police support, and the school was barricaded. I pondered how to get in.

"We could climb on the roof, enter through the air vents," Haley suggested. It was the best idea that we had, so we went with it. Me, Haley, Jason (who insisted to go in hopes of finding his brother anyways), and two other kids whose siblings were hiding with Nate set off for the school.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" I turned around. It was Evan, and he was holding guns. "I stole these from an unlocked police car," stated Evan with a huge grin on his face.

Evan trotted up to the rest of the group, and handed the five of us a fully loaded pistol. There were six guns, and I locked eyes with Evan.

"You coming?"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world."


	3. Chapter 3

_This is chapter 3! I'm sorry for the long wait, I'm working on college applications, so this definitely isn't first on my mind. Once I'm past the early deadlines, in less than a week, I'll start posting one or two chapters a week. Also, thanks for the great comments, they really keep me going. Just so you know, the attempted rescue of Nate is a very small part of the story, there is an entire adventure ahead! I expect this story to probably go to about 50 or more chapters. _

We trotted to the back of the High School, as not to be seen by on of the cops, who would stop us from entering the Junior High if they saw us. It was my idea to sneak behind the high school, cut through the woods, and enter the Jr. High from the back.

Despite the fact that the schools were barricaded, I still felt uneasy. I wasn't sure if any had escaped, or if the zombies were spreading across the area.

I flipped open my cell phone, and decided to call my older brother, Jeremy, who was staying at the house because my parents were on vacation in St. John.

"Will! Are you all right?" My brother panted, practically screaming into the phone.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Where's Nate? Is he okay too?"

"I don't know. He's still in school, he's locked in. He's in the kitchen, sealed behind the metal gates."

"Have you told the police?"

"Yeah, I have, but they've barricaded the school. They won't let us in, so we're going to sneak in through the roof."

"We? Who's with you?" Asked Jeremy.

"Evan, and some other kids. Jeremy, there's at least another thirty kids in that building, and nobody's doing anything about it."

"Jeeze… in one day, the world is going to madness," Jeremy stated, exhausted.

"Jeremy, what's going on? What are these things, the zombies? Are they spreading?"

"I don't know much. I know they started in New York, and they've moved down to Connecticut. All they want to do is eat… eat us."

"Why?"

"What the hell do you think? I have no idea why. Nobody does. Tell me exactly where you are, I'm coming to pick you up. We'll get Nate together."

"No Jeremy. If we wait ten minutes for you to get here, Nate might be dead. We have guns, and we're going to get him now. I'll call you back when we're on the roof. I have to go."

I snapped my phone shut.

"Will, is everything all right?" Asked Evan.

"Yeah, everything's perfectly freaking fine. Evan, the zombies are spreading, they started in New York. Call your parents and see if they're home, we have to get out of here as soon as we get Nate."

We finally reached a clearing, and stepped out onto the Jr. High football field, which was located behind the school. Suddenly, everything seemed eerily open. The sky was overcast, there was a moderate breeze, yet everything had an empty, deathly, shine to it. It was almost as if the world had died, and was reborn into an unnatural dimension.

The group and I trudged ourselves across the field, and to the black top, where there was a playground, with equipment. You could get to the roof of the building if you climbed to the top of the brightly red equipment, then jumped over.

As I made my way up a ladder, I heard a soft, wet noise coming from the playhouse. I took a look inside, and what I saw was the most terrifying sight of my entire life.

There was a girl, about 12, face covered in shining blood, stuffing the intestines of a school janitor in her mouth. I read the label "John" on the nametag of his shirt. I would have recognized him from my Junior High years, had it not been for the fact that his face was eaten.

My stomach turned. I carefully pointed my gun at the girls head. "What are you doing?" Exclaimed Haley. I ignored her and pulled the trigger. "No!" she bellowed.

"Quiet! Do you want to get caught? I'm just doing what I have to do. Didn't you see, that girl was eating John? She was freaking eating him! If you see any of those things, shoot them, unless you don't care to live." I felt bad I was so harsh, but I had lost my cool. I had just killed a person, a person that seemed to be living. But I knew they weren't, I knew that if I was going to rescue my brother I would have to suck it up. I would have to kill more zombies, no matter how much it hurt.


	4. Chapter 4

After climbing over the equipment one by one, we finally made it to the desolate and deserted rooftop.

The place was filthy, it was covered in autumn leaves and dirt. Once in a while, I had seen the custodians cleaning the rooftops, but apparently, they didn't do a very good job.

Most of the group made their way directly across the brick rooftop, however, I kept looking along the side, to see when we would approach the cafeteria (which was connected to the outside).

As we came around a corner, I saw the cafeteria doors, they were heavily barricaded, and a cop was guarding a door. But things didn't seem right, as the once faint groaning of the zombies had now become loud and clear. I looked beyond a tree, and I saw one of the things approaching the cop. At first, he was unaware of the zombie, but as the zombie approached him, I couldn't help myself.

"Look out!" The cop looked right in my direction. "Behind you!" The cop turned around just in time to knock the thing over the head with his club. He pulled out his gun and shot it square in the head. He stuffed the gun back into his upholstery, and glared at me again.

"What the hell are you doing up there, kid?"

"My brother's in there."

"Nobody's in there, at least nobody living is. You're in an authorized area. Get down from there before you're arrested."

"No! I have proof! There's thirty to forty kids still in the school. They're locked in the cafeteria kitchen. I talked to my brother."

"What a load of-" The turned around at the noise of another zombie. He shot it down, but another zombie approached him from the other side. He shot that one down too, but more kept coming from another door, along the side of the school. Somehow, they had gotten through the glass door.

The police officer took aim at another few, then took off running. He ran for the field in which we came. There were about fifty zombies, children and adults, stumbling after him. "The equipment," I bellowed. "Get on the roof!"

Without thinking, he did as I said, stumbling up in a second, not even noticing the two mangled bodies. He got to the top, and dashed over to where I was. As he saw the rest of the group, he looked puzzled, and stared at me.

"Who are they?"

"Their siblings are in there too."

"Are you saying there really are kids in that school?"

"Yes, I am."

"Are you certain?" A nodded, and he picked up his radio. "We have confirmed reports that there are still up to forty kids barricaded in the Jr. High cafeteria kitchen. Calling for backup, over."

"_Sorry, officer. We have orders, we are not to go in that school, it is safely barricaded."_

"No it isn't, about fifty of those things just chased after me out of the f-wing corridor. We NEED backup, those things are headed for the high school, and they need to be taken down. And if we have backup, we can get those kids out of there safely."

"_Forget the kids for now. How many of those things have escaped?"_

"I don't know, they just keep pouring out of there. They've escaped. The infection has escaped."

The radio didn't answer the cop again. "Damnit!" He turned and looked at me. He was young, about twenty or twenty-five, short, curly black hair, and blue eyes. "My name is Officer Jason Dupree. And you are?"

"William, William Todd."

"Well, William, are you ready to get your brother?"


	5. Chapter 5

This chapter will solely be a news report. Every now and then, I'm going to throw in news reports, and here's the first one:

_This is Darryl Hayes, reporting for CBS news, as we have continuing coverage of the New York civilian attacks. The New York City Mayor has called a state of emergency for the entire New York City area, including all five boroughs. There seems to be an infection that is causing people to be mentally out of control, attacking all people they see. The mayor is urging all people to stay indoors, and away from all infected peoples. We are now transferring live to the President, who is now making a statement._

"_At approximately 9:00 AM this morning, New York City police departments first started receiving word of multiple, and identical attacks, coming from a concentrated area in Brooklyn. The reported attacks were violent, and were spreading. It seems that the attacks came from people were infected with a new and never before seen disease. Not much is known about the disease, but we do know that as long as you stay out of contact with the infected people, you will not take on this disease. I now hand it over to the secretary of defense."_

_We will get back to the secretary's speech in a moment. Right now, we are receiving confirmed statements, from unidentified state officials from Connecticut and New Jersey, that the infection has in fact reached those areas. Now, we go to the Secretary of Defense._

"_As the president clearly stated, this disease has affected those living in the New York area. It has also entered regions across the entire tri-state area. To stop the infection, we have sent out our National Guard to contain the infection. Do not worry, but as a precautionary measure, we are instating a nationwide curfew of 6:00PM. Violators can and will be arrested. For those who are still in the infected area, lock and board up your homes, do not affiliate yourselves with any suspicious characters. Keep yourselves armed, and remember, that the infected only want to harm you, so you have all rights of self defense when encountering one of the infected. After the infected areas are sealed, we will come and get you. No questions."_

_You have heard it from the Secretary of Defense yourself. It seems as if the disease only spreads by direct contact with one of the infected. Here at channel 2, we have been able to produce an image of where the infection is suspected to be. If an area is red, it has been overrun by the infected._


End file.
